Jason Bourne

Now I remember ... I'm pre-Batman Bruce Wayne

Grade: B

Director: Paul Greengrass

Starring: Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles and  Riz Ahmed

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 3 min.

After Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass spent years denying interest in making another Jason Bourne movie, it’s worth pointing out that Jason Bourne is the first in the spy film series for which each has a producer credit. For all their critical accolades, Bourne is their go-to cash cow, much like Tom Cruise and his Mission: Impossible film franchise.

Jason Bourne is the fifth Bourne film and the fourth starring Damon in the titular role of the somehow still amnesiac ubër-agent. Those who enjoy the series’ pulsating vibe, particularly Greengrass’ two entries—The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, will find plenty of  throwback fun in revisiting this milieu after nine years off-screen. Anyone looking for new material will have to settle for a greatest hits set.

Living a nomadic life off the grid as a street fighter, Bourne is lured out of hiding by Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles), the ubiquitous CIA field operative now turned freedom-of-information fighter. Parsons has unearthed secrets about a new black ops program code named Ironhand, along with, naturally, more details about Bourne’s true background.

Even though the sense of discovery regarding Bourne’s past was already teased out over three films, those trademark memory flashes start to flicker, careening Bourne into an opening act that cribs Bourne Supremacy’s intro. This time, Bourne wants to get to the bottom of the shadowy circumstances surrounding the death of his actual father. Do we find out in the next sequel that Bourne’s mother was named Martha?

The most taut part of Jason Bourne is the labyrinthian cat-and-mouse games of spy versus spy. Young, ambitious CIA analyst Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander) believes she can lure Bourne back into the fold. Skeptical CIA director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) instead wants to Take Out Bourne™, aided by an agency assassin (Vincent Cassel) with his own axe to grind.

This sequel’s search for topicality lands in the post-Edward Snowden era, as Dewey is also trying to strongarm his way through the backdoor of a Facebook-like social media platform named Deep Dream. But the tech giant’s head, Aaron Kalloor (Riz Ahmed), has privacy and stockholder reservations, and he’s is threatening to expose Dewey nefarious role in the surveillance industrial complex.

It’s hard to decide which is shakier, Greengrass’ camera-in-a-blender or Vikander’s American accent. The elaborate action set pieces are capped by a punishing chase sequence through the Vegas Strip. But the bombast is also punctuated by visual grace notes—the bullet wounds in Bourne’s back call back to the 2002 original film; Bourne casually discards a ball cap to blend into a crowd; a spy recorder he lifts from a tech expo that doesn’t resurface until the denouement.

There’s a sense of self-parody afoot. Just as it wouldn’t be a James Bond film without girls and vodka martinis, it wouldn’t be Jason Bourne without the umteenth sight of CIA agents glaring at monitors while barking two-word orders. But while Greengrass and Damon try to adapt Bourne for current events, it’s high time to advance the Bourne character beyond the hunted spy still hunting for his true self. Jason Bourne knows his identity—it’s time for the Bourne movies to update theirs.

Trance

Grade: C +

Director: Danny Boyle

Starring: James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassell

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 41 min.

A friend once said he held a special affinity for Martin Scorsese’s remake of Cape Fear because “it feels like Scorsese just having fun.” The same could be said for Danny Boyle’s Trance, his return of sorts to crime thrillers like his 1994 feature debut, Shallow Grave. But Boyle’s budgets and filmmaking collaborators have changed over the years, including regular cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (28 Days Later..., Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours). The consequence is a slick, self-assured oeuvre that, in Trance, Boyle dares to juxtapose against van Gogh, Rembrandt and Delacroix. Unfortunately, the film also mirrors a piece of modern art that holds less discernable meaning the longer you stare at it.

Introduced through a chorus of lens flares, synth bass and recital of his professional duties, Simon (James McAvoy) is an auctioneer working at a London-based auction house that’s robbed by Franck (Vincent Cassell) and his cartoony gang. Simon suffers a blow to the head during the heist of Goya’s “Witches in the Air,” briefly obfuscating the fact that Simon is complicit in the caper, the consequence of mounting gambling debts he owes Franck. Moreover, the trauma also gives Simon amnesia so he forgets where stowed away the priceless painting.

After crude means of interrogation prove fruitless, Franck turns to hypnotherapist named Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson), who quickly realizes Simon isn’t there to find his missing keys but instead the missing artwork. And she wants her cut.

An generally taut heist flick soon leaps down a psychological rabbit hole, as Elizabeth’s repeated therapy sessions provide more insight into Simon’s backstory. But everything from the storyline to the characterizations are subsumed by Boyle’s stylism. Elizabeth is too self-assured; Franck’s patience and panache belies the portrait of a seedy British gangster. As Simon devolves into a nervy knot of neuroses, Boyle at first blurs, then obliterates the line between reality and fancy.

Trance feels like a film made by someone auditing a community college course in hypnotherapy by day and watching Inception on repeat every night. It’s captivating to look upon, and I’m not (just) talking about Dawson’s frequent nudity. The photography and camerawork are polished, the cast is capable (even when their characters are miswritten), and electronica score by Underworld’s Rick Smith propels Boyle’s frenetic pace. But once you manage to catch your breath a moment, the incongruities and illogic crowd out the visual acuity.

As the false endings pile up, there’s the chatty Big Reveal that ties up the loose ends...except it doesn’t. Boyle’s marriage of art and psychoanalysis implodes into an indulgent morass of mixed motives and plot twists. At one point, a character is given the option of pressing a button on a computer screen that will enable that person to “forget everything.” Bleary viewers of Trance won’t require any such assistance.

*Originally published at Indyweek.com

Black Swan

This Avengers movie is really getting out of hand

Grade: A –

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Starring: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, and Winona Ryder

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 48 minutes

“We open…with Swan Lake. Done to death, I know. But not like this.”

In a film steeped in doppelgangers, ballet director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) may as well be channeling film director Darren Aronofsky as he makes this introductory – and slyly foreshadowing – pronouncement to his company in Black Swan. Indeed, the contentious relationship between Leroy and his new prima ballerina, Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), embodies the symbiotic, sometimes parasitic bond between artist and muse…or a filmmaker and his leading actress.

Yet, that allegory is but the amuse-bouche to a thematic feast. Set against the backdrop of a New York City production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Black Swan recounts the ballet’s plot through a contemporary idiom using the same “story within a story” format found in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes. The film opens with a literal rendering of the ballet’s prologue, during which Rothbart casts a spell that turns a princess into a virtuous white swan.

The scene cuts directly to Nina waking in the apartment she shares with her domineering mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey). Nina is one of several ballerinas auditioning for the role of the Swan Queen, but while Leroy is confident Nina can capture the innocence and grace of the White Swan, he worries she cannot exude the sensuality needed to perform her carnal twin, the Black Swan.

An uneasy relationship develops between the seemingly chaste Nina and her licentious understudy, Lily (Mila Kunis). Their rivalry expands into a twisted acquaintance as Nina – prodded by Leroy, curiosity, and internal demons – taps into her dark side and confronts the duality of her damaged psyche.

Black Swan exhibits the physical and emotional toll performers often suffer in pursuit of their art, a trait it shares with Aronofsky’s The Wrestler and one undoubtedly endured by Portman, who trained for months in preparation for this Oscar-worthy tour de force.

This concept of destruction as a necessary precursor to creation is revisited throughout the film, whether it’s Nina’s ascension at the expense of boozy, aging marquee ballerina Beth Macintyre (Winona Ryder, her very presence symbolic) or her forceful defiance of her maternal figure in order to unlock the sexual awakening needed along her path to artistic achievement.

Moreover, implications of Nina’s sexual abuse and self-mutilation serve as the backdrop for her compulsion to attain creative perfection. Aronofsky juxtaposes sexual maturation, particularly in a male-dominated culture, with ballet’s concurrent idealization and objectification of femininity. Shadows of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion are cast throughout: the insinuation that Nina fornicated with strange men in a bar draws a violent rebuke from her mother, and when Nina finally awakens her inner Black Swan, it comes only with the aid of sapphic stimulation.

There are parallels between Erica and Piper Laurie’s mommy dearest in Carrie, also a film about menstrual angst. As Nina prepares for the final pas de deux, a wound in the shape of a blossoming, crimson flower forms conspicuously near her lower abdomen. “I felt it,” she whispers as the final chord sounds, a smile of ecstasy creeping across her face. The crowd roars its approval as they – like we – demand more, no matter the price.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/a-thematic-feast-in-black-swan/Content?oid=1884498